An Uneducated View of Sex, Food and Politics - Derek Haines (beach read book .TXT) 📗

make a family, and only out of a sense of duty. I also promise that I will do it quietly in the matrimonial bed with the lights out and door locked, and will remain as fully dressed as practically possible so as to ensure my own, and my wife’s dignity.
MY GUILT: No need to be facetious.
MY CONSCIENCE: Why don’t you fuck off and let me enjoy my life!
MY GUILT: You are a dirty foul mouthed creature. You need help. Have you considered psychological help? It is nothing to be ashamed of.
MY CONSCIENCE: Hey Guilt! Surely you have completed your role in my life. Well over forty years is a long stint. I am clear. A clear conscience! There is no useful purpose you can serve. Why don’t you go away?
MY GUILT: I can’t go away. I am stuck in here. You will just have to learn to live with me. Will you stop swearing at me if I promise to try and be a little more flexible? A little more tolerant. A little more 90’s than 60’ in attitude.
MY CONSCIENCE: All right. I’ll try. It would be so much easier if we could find a quiet time and space to resolve some of these issues. A time when we are both comfortable and relaxed. There is hardly enough room in here for simple rational common sense and everyday thinking. Most of my time is taken up with a matter of an overdue credit card. Handling all this moral, ethical and ‘what’s normal’ business as well could really overload his CPU capacity.
MY GUILT: Why don’t we meet when he’s watching the football. We can have the whole place to ourselves!
MY CONSCIENCE: Terrific idea! See you an Saturday afternoon.
Agenda of topics to be carefully thought about during Carlton v St.Kilda. So what is to be considered normal? And who is to judge what normal is? What is normal sex? Can sex be normal? Am I normal? Who is normal? Do I have to be normal? Can I be normal? Do I even care? What will I do about my credit card?

Not a Chapter. Just Autobiographical Egotism

It is normal to begin a book such as this with a few notes about the author. Alternatively these notes can be found on the back cover with glowing references from famous names to give credibility to the author. I have not used the back cover for this purpose because I don’t know anybody famous. And I cannot afford to pay one either. I did meet one famous person. Willy Brandt, the ex Chancellor of Germany sat beside me on a flight from Frankfurt to Bangkok. I said hello to him, he nodded in acknowledgment of my greeting, then immediately ordered what was obviously not his first double scotch for the day. Downing his drink in mutually polite silence, he then fell asleep and stayed that way for the entire flight. With sour grapes in my thoughts, I don’t think a recommendation from Willy would have made my chances of selling one book any better.
I digressed. This opportunity for the reader to gain a little insight into the background and life of the author, helps in understanding from what perspective the writer is coming from and possibly why he is writing the book. I wanted to give you, the reader, this customary offering. The reason I have strategically placed it here in between chapters three and four is firstly so you could get a feel for the subject matter and now merge that inkling with the now to be admitted personal curriculum vitae. Secondly, to add a touch of individuality to this volume. And thirdly, well, I forgot to do it at the start, and I don’t know how to re-format all the previous chapter headings because I have just upgraded my WP software and I haven’t read the on line help yet.
My progression from being simply a two cell possibility and progressing by division into a four cell near certainty, took place in the obvious anatomical location, but geographically took place in a small country town called York. Sixty miles away to the west of York, nestled on the coast of Western Australia stood Perth. Perth is the most isolated city in the world. Nearly 2000 miles from the nearest city. It is also the most western city of the most isolated country in the world.
Some months later, I was born in Northam. Located 30 miles from York. I believe my mother had to make this journey to find a doctor who owned a pair of forceps. There wasn’t a pair to be found in York. I had apparently shown, at a pre-early age, my tendency to like to sleep in. Being three weeks late and a little over cooked, and my mother being built like a waif on a diet, it was intelligent forward planning to find a doctor who could apply some leverage to the extraction of an overweight lazy lump of a baby.
Back to York with a few bruises around my head, I lived until the age of four in the company of a cat which learned to tolerate having its tail pulled, and a playmate of a similar age to myself, named Sandra if my memory for names serves me correctly. I stand to be corrected on Sandra’s name as my memory for names can fail me less than ten seconds after an introduction. So venturing back forty three years for a name is fraught with danger. Not being the industrial and economic epicentre of the world, my Mum and Dad decided to leave York on the pretext that there was no work for my father. I agreed to accompany them on this new adventure. Plainly they felt a need to escape the small town mentality and discover the world.
So it was that we moved to Geraldton, a small country town 312 miles north of Perth! Remember Perth, the most isolated city in the world. Well now I was geographically exactly 252 miles further away from the most isolated city in the world. With these geographical facts starting to emerge, I trust you are getting a hint as to why I could not find some answers to some questions I had as a child. It took another six years (maybe closer to seven) before my parents got the travel bug again, and finally we moved to the most isolated city in the entire world. Perth! The ‘Big Smoke!’.
In 1968 I was twelve years old, and have a silly little memory, but one that will tell you something of what living in Perth was like. The television news bulletins were like a jigsaw. If any news of importance happened, say in Sydney, we would have the news read to us, but with no footage or pictures. In three days time, when the film of the news item had been flown to Perth, it would be shown. If the news happened to be of an international event, say in London, it could take two weeks to see the footage, and by then no one was interested. There was no contingency for flying news film out of Perth, because no one anywhere else in Australia would be interested in three day old news from a place they hardly knew existed.
I would have to wait, until I was twenty six years old before I ventured to Sydney and out of the social isolation of Perth on a regular basis, and until I was thirty to leave on a one way ticket. Since then, I have been a chronically habitual traveller, a pathological seeker of information and knowledge, and a meeter of new people and friends. Not simply satisfied with finding answers to my unanswered questions, I seek to find questions I haven’t even thought to ask as yet. Probably a symptomatic result of wanting to know everything I perceived that I didn’t know in my first thirty years. There is a distinct possibility that the total of every word in this book adds up to the entire social, cultural, historical, economic, political, scientific and general knowledge of a three year old that has lived their entire life in London, Paris, New York or Sydney, but I cannot contain my excitement at writing about my life discoveries. If nothing else, this book might prove a best seller in York, Geraldton and Perth.
My career path in retrospect reminds me of a nursery rhyme I remember as a child. ‘There was a crooked man who walked a crooked mile…’ As logical and well planned as ‘mad woman’s lunchbox’ comes to mind; also a term dug out from a long ago memory. Simply listed in broad and not chronological categories, I have been a printer, a salesman, self employed trader, guitarist, environmentally inspired society dropout, husband twice, father, poet and ever hopeful as yet unpublished author. (Should anyone be reading this book in a printed form, and be able to verify that they have not met me, please take a ball point pen and correct that last entry. Simply draw a dark line through ‘ever hopeful as yet unpublished author’ and replace with ‘well known, successful and extremely talented PUBLISHED author.’
There is a growing temptation I feel to continue with this interlude between chapters, but I do not want to give any possible impression that I may be displaying egotistical tendencies. Raving on about myself could induce this impression, so I will cut short what has been a most enjoyable session on my little Toshiba laptop, and leave you with one last piece of information about myself. Just to round off your insight into my personal life.
I wear a beard. I have for most of my life. Except for the time early in life when I didn’t. The reason is not one of vanity, or an attempt to induce a mature studious look about my person, nor to satisfy fashion trends as they come and go. No, the reason I have a scruffy greying beard is that I am chronically lazy, and I prefer to put the valuable time it would take each morning to shave to a better use. Extra sleep!
It is time to return to the main subject matter of this book. But before I do, I would like to just let you have a little useless information. While typing these ego inspired lines, I was watching a football match on television. The game finished with Carlton beating St. Kilda in cake walk. I don’t know why, but for some reason my head is aching. Surprising really, because it takes no brain power at all to watch a football match, and even less to type a few lines about myself. I must be coming down with something!

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Publication Date: 11-09-2010

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